Nancy Cadogan's 2024 solo exhibition ‘Stanza' ran from 12 May to 2 July 2024 and was a personal journey reflecting two decades of painting on Lake Como. Consisting of approximately 20 works, many painted specifically for this exhibition, ‘Stanza’ follows her 2021 exhibition in the Keats-Shelley House Museum, Rome and her critically acclaimed exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London. Cadogan’s paintings explore dreams and poetry, moments of stillness, contemplation and the infinitely changing landscape of Como itself. This is the first international exhibition to take place in the historic Torre delle Arti Bellagio, a public art space in the heart of the lakeside town.

The artist sees this exhibition as a meditation on the many writers, artists and musicians who have found inspiration in the waters of Lake Como. “This atmospheric landscape has provided a place of solace and reflection that has attracted Romantic writers such as Percy and Mary Shelly and Wordsworth, as well as Longfellow, Mark Twain and Manzoni, not to mention the artists Turner and Ruskin,” says Cadogan, who has made new paintings in response to the writings of Mary Shelley, who spent a summer on the lake with her husband, the poet Percy Shelly. She wrote ‘It surpasses in beauty any other place I have seen with the exception of the islands of Killarney’ and wrote about her walks through the landscape in her Rambles in Germany and Italy.